Month: August 2012

When did Churchill read Mein Kampf? The ques­tion came up in a Finest Hour quiz and the answer was: “In trans­lat­ed excerpts, and then in its entire­ty when E.J. Dugdale’s trans­la­tion into Eng­lish was pub­lished in 1933.”

Gor­don Craig’s “Churchill and Ger­many” in Robert Blake and Wm. Roger Louis, eds., Churchill: A Major New Assess­ment of His Life in Peace and War, states: “Churchill seems at one time to have read an ear­ly trans­la­tion of Mein Kampf; but he cer­tain­ly did not have more than a news­pa­per reader’s knowl­edge of the nature of Hitler’s par­ty or its cur­rent views on for­eign pol­i­cy.…

Which news­pa­pers did Churchill pre­fer? I am par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in 1919, when he was Sec­re­tary of State for War and Air. Was he a Times or Tele­graph read­er? —J.W., via email

Await­ing his train at St. Andrews, Fife, cir­ca 1940.

Remark­ably, Churchill read all the news­pa­pers he could lay his hands on—from The Times to the Dai­ly Work­er, the British ver­sion of which was lat­er renamed the Morn­ing Star.

He would do this in bed of a morn­ing after break­fast­ing off a tray. He liked to dis­card each sheet of a news­pa­per to the left and right. In the 1940s this infu­ri­at­ed his valet, Frank Sawyers, who made a show of dis­ap­proval as he picked up the sheets.…

This brief video by Sen­a­tor Rand Paul is a good exam­ple of why the Unit­ed States Con­gress has only a 10% approval rat­ing. Isn’t Sen­a­tor Reid in charge in the Sen­ate? The video explains why the Sen­ate is an insult to the Amer­i­can peo­ple.

I’ve giv­en up on the U.S. Sen­ate, myself. I’m glad some­body is still writ­ing them let­ters.

Will any read­er advise whether Sen­a­tor Paul won on his July 29th point of order, attempt­ing to get extra time to read a 600-page Sen­ate bill due for a vote in six or eight hours?…